Michael J. Totten’s blog demonstrates how the medium can be used to bring a depth of reporting that one doesn’t ordinarily find in the so-called mainstream media. Totten has no corporate backing, relying instead on donations and, I presume, the sale of his freelance writing and photography yet one can only be impressed by his work. His latest Hanging with Hezbollah piece is a good example of that:
The first time I met Hussein Naboulsi, Hezbollah’s media relations liaison, he was perfectly friendly. But he later threatened me with physical violence because I cracked a joke about Hezbollah on my blog. On another occasion I was detained for two hours by Hezbollah because they suspected one of my photojournalist colleagues was a Jew. A reporter friend (and I’ll keep his name out of this) was harassed because of an entirely innocuous article he wrote about them for a mainstream left-wing American magazine. Chris Allbritton, who works on occasion for Time magazine, wrote the following on his blog during the July War: “Hizbullah is launching Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s passport, and they’ve already hassled a number of us and threatened one.”
It’s worth a read (and a bookmark).
3 comments ↓
Dear A,
You’ll have to read through M. Totten’s writing to get a grip on the “journo”-quality of his reports. While he is a good writer, his level of understanding the Middle East does not exceed that of a Tom Friedman.
There is no “depth” to his reporting at all. If you want that - just read Lebanese blogs.
He spent 2 years at AUB but didn’t learn much Arabic. And if you read through his coverage of the 2006 Summer War (i.e. Israel vs. Hizbollah/Lebanon) then you’ll soon see his rather uninformed and skewed reporting.
Makes for fun reading, but not much more.
–MSK
www.aqoul.com
Thanks for that, MSK. I’ve just had a look at some of the older pieces on there and I can see what you mean. The idea of a blog trying to provide that sort of independent reporting is interesting though.
What Lebanese blogs would you recommend?
Dear A,
I’d start with the openlebanon.com page - it aggregates news & blogs.
The best consistently well-written blogs, in my view, would be:
lettersapart.blogspot.com
beirutspring.blogspot.com
lebanesebloggers.blogspot.com
beirut2bayside.blogspot.com
I do not necessarily agree with them (that is particularly true for Tony of #4) but they are on a level comparable with Austrolabe, ‘Aqoul, and other sites.
Unfortunately, so far I haven’t come across really good “March 8″ (i.e. Hizbollah, Aounies, etc.) blogs.
–MSK
www.aqoul.com
PS: One last thing on M. Totten - I read his blog regularly and derive quite a bit of useful information from it. But I can do that because I know how to filter it.
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